1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a head suspension for a disk drive serving as an external storage device of a computer, a load beam of the head suspension, a method of manufacturing the load beam, and a method of processing a work.
2. Description of Related Art
Disk drives such as magnetic disk drives and optical disk drivers are widely used as external storage devices for computers. The magnetic disk drive or a hard disk drive (HDD) employs a head suspension that supports a slider to write and read data to and from a magnetic disk incorporated in the magnetic disk drive.
The head suspension includes a base plate, a load beam, and a flexure attached to the load beam. The load beam is provided with a dimple to apply load onto the slider and movably support the same. The dimple has a spherical surface and is formed by pressing the load beam. When a disk in the hard disk drive is turned, the slider floats from the disk and sways with the dimple supporting the slider. This arrangement secures a smooth movement of the slider with respect to the disk.
There is a need to finish the spherical surface of the dimple as accurate as possible.
To meet the need, the applicant of the present invention has proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-192536 a technique of finishing a concave surface of a dimple die used to press a dimple. The technique employs a jet nozzle for jetting water to the concave surface of the dimple die and a particle feeder for feeding fine particles to hit the concave surface. The fine particles are jetted with the water jet to finish the concave surface into a mirror surface.
To entirely hit the concave surface with the water jet, the dimple die must be movably supported. The water jet is set in the range of 200 m/sec to 1000 m/sec in speed and the fine particles in the range of 6 nm to 100 nm in diameter, to suppress fluctuation in the coefficient of friction.
This related art finishes the surface of the dimple die into a mirror surface, so that a dimple formed with the dimple die may have a smooth surface. Namely, the related art tries to indirectly improve the surface finishing accuracy of a three-dimensional object (dimple).